Mourinho frustrated by inconsistency

Jose Mourinho's face was a picture of frustration on Saturday after his inconsistent Chelsea team suffered its first league loss to Stoke City in 38 years, 3-2.

"We played amazingly well at the beginning of the game. It was like Sunderland," a glum-looking Mourinho said, referring to Wednesday's thrilling 4-3 league victory.

"After half an hour we should have been winning 3-0 or 4-0 and we weren't. Normally you kill the game, but we didn't."

Germany forward Andre Schuerrle had given the Londoners the lead at Stoke with a low, angled left-foot drive from the edge of the penalty area in the 10th minute.

Chelsea continued to dominate and should have put the game out of reach before Stoke's Peter Crouch sparked a dramatic turnaround with an equalizer out of the blue in the 42nd minute.

Schuerrle grabbed his second goal of the game after the break, but Stoke secured a shock Premier League victory thanks to efforts from substitutes Stephen Ireland and Oussama Assaidi.

"The three players behind the striker again played very well but we didn't score enough goals," said Mourinho. "On top of that we made defensive mistakes and conceded.

"If you don't score a lot of goals but you don't make defensive mistakes you can win with just one goal."

Schuerrle, Juan Mata and Eden Hazard were the three men providing the bullets for striker Fernando Torres, but the Spaniard never appeared likely to pull the trigger and was replaced by Demba Ba in the 59th minute.

"This is a team that has to score goals and capitalize on the production of football," said Mourinho.

"We are not a physical team, we are not a team with conditions to defend against physical teams so we have to score when we have the game in our hands.

"In the last 15, 20 minutes we didn't play well, the game they wanted was the game we gave them. It was easy for them and they were able to control it."

(China Daily 12/09/2013 page24)